…The Middle East was also well represented, with universities from Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Turkey making the list.

Thailand made the grade too, “but there is no place for Malaysia”, Times Higher Education noted about the Southeast Asian nation where tertiary education has become a significant industry.

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University Of Tokyo emerged top among Asian universities followed by the National University of Singapore.

University of Hong Kong, Seoul National University and China’s Peking University clinched the third, fourth and fifth spots respectively.

Thailand has two universities in this year’s ranking, King Mongkut’s University of Technology, Thonburi, which rose five places to joint 50th, and Mahidol University, which dropped 21 places to 82nd spot.

Singapore has two highly placed universities in the ranking, NUS at second spot and Nanyang Technological University at 11th position.

Hong Kong was named the star performer by THE, given its size, and the fact that it had six universities the top 50 of the ranking.

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Malaysia failed to get on the list for the second year running. In the first rankings list in 2012, UKM was ranked 98th.

The country was also absent from the Times Higher Education World Reputation rankings list released in March, losing out to other Southeast Asian countries.

Responding to the failure of local public universities to make the list in this year’s Times Higher Education Top 100 Universities under 50 years old, Education Minister II Datuk Seri Idris Jusoh had said that the decline did not reflect the local tertiary education levels in the country.

..“Rankings don’t mean everything, although we can improve (our performance). We must be realistic when aiming for a position,” he said.

The nation’s continuous failure to feature in any university rankings despite a huge education budget every year has not gone down well with the opposition, which has taken Putrajaya to task over the miserable performance.

The Education Ministry received RM38.7 billion in 2013 and has been allocated RM54 billion this year – the biggest allocation yet. – July 19, 2014.